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The heavy-rock trio Dommengang hail from a little bit of everywhere. Guitarist Dan “Sig” Wilson has been gigging around the Pacific Northwest psych scene for years now, occasionally sitting in with Castanets and Scout Niblett, among others. With roots in Oregon and Alaska, drummer Adam Bulgasem and bassist Brian Markham settled over in Brooklyn, roughly 3000 miles away from their bandmate. After touring together as the backing band for Portland’s Holy Sons, they recently moved out to Los Angeles together, marking the first time all three of them have ever lived in the same city. Rehearsing and recording must be a lot easier.

From these places these three musicians bring different concerns, different influences, and different ideas. Each of them bashes his instrument like he’s playing lead, but the music retains an arid austerity, like it might have been left in the sun too long. The trio’s 2015 debut as Dommengang, the mostly instrumental Everybody’s Boogie, combined heavy riffs with thrashy punk and spacey psychedelia to create a hyperactive form of guitar rock; their follow-up, which was produced by Tim Green of the Fucking Champs, buffs away some of that grime and distortion. Love Jail, despite its crummy title, sounds cleaner and more focused, its heavy sound rooted in the classic rock of bargain-bin denizens like Free, Rory Gallagher, and Humble Pie.

Perhaps due to their proximity, they’ve become a tighter combo, more inventive in their pummeling and more resourceful in their references. Bulgasem plays all fills behind Markham’s sludgy bass and Wilson’s contorting riffs, especially on instrumental jams like the title track and “Lone Pine.” They still can’t muster up anything as nimble as an actual boogie, even when they title a song “Dave’s Boogie,” but even at their stiffest, Dommengang prize tension and release, which lends even their most meandering jams a sense of purpose. “Stealing Miles” sneaks in a country-rock chorus that may be the album’s strongest hook, but the song nearly runs into a ditch as they navigate one knotty jam after another. “Color Out of Space” sounds like the tweaked desert pop of the Meat Puppets, morphing seamlessly into the compelling aimlessness of the instrumental “Stay Together,” which sounds like that title was a musical command.

In that regard, the band’s scattered origins can be especially compelling. Dommengang understand they’re going nowhere—not, of course, in the professional or musical sense. The roads they travel in these songs have no real destinations. “Lovely Place” opens with a cocksure strut along a desert highway, and gradually the band ratchets up the tempo and the tension. “The country is torn,” Wilson snarls, perhaps understating things. “It’s still a lovely place to be, with the windows rolled down and the sun in my hand.” Then they break into a wide-open jam, careening across the bridge like they’re drag racing Golden Earring.

The resurgence of heavy rock may be linked to a nostalgia for a time when crunchy guitars and the dudes who played them enjoyed a more prominent place in pop culture, but Love Jail goes beyond a mere glance in the rearview mirror. It sounds vintage, but it feels current. Dommengang find some potential for escape in this music, some freedom in that absence of a destination. They can go anywhere, bashing out in all directions until they find solid ground between the darkness of our torn country and the sun in their hand.